| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!
XXXI
My Bed is a Boat
My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor's coat
And starts me in the dark.
At night I go on board and say
Good-night to all my friends on shore;
I shut my eyes and sail away
And see and hear no more.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor.
Thus the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot
concurred to subject the earl to the penalties of outlawry,
by which the abbot would gain his due upon the lands
of Locksley, and the rest would be confiscate to the king.
Still the king did not think it advisable to assail the earl
in his own strong-hold, but caused a diligent watch
to be kept over his motions, till at length his rumoured
marriage with the heiress of Arlingford seemed to point
out an easy method of laying violent hands on the offender.
Sir Ralph Montfaucon, a young man of good lineage and of an
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: them gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his
wife.
At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He
earns some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs'
worth of canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and
he lives with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who
agree delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on
earth. Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in
which he is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not
a family portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: to be so indeed, he entered at the Colline gate, and took Rome, in the
three hundred and sixtieth year, or a little more, after it was built;
if, indeed, it can be supposed probable that an exact chronological
statement has been preserved of events which were themselves the cause
of chronological difficulties about things of later date; of the
calamity itself, however, and of the fact of the capture, some faint
rumors seem to have passed at the time into Greece. Heraclides
Ponticus, who lived not long after these times, in his book upon the
Soul, relates that a certain report came from the west, that an army,
proceeding from the Hyperboreans, had taken a Greek city called Rome,
seated somewhere upon the great sea. But I do not wonder that so
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